Introduction

My first parentless Thanksgiving came two months after my father died. My husband, eighteen-month-old son, and I went to my brother's to spend the weekend with his family. Despite the smile I wore, the celebration was doomed before it started. I was thirty-one, and both my parents were gone. I didn't feel old enough to be responsible for Thanksgiving. I was no longer somebody's child going home for the holidays. Overnight, I had become a parentless parent, feeling, as a young mother, solely responsible for my son's experience of Thanksgiving. I felt overwhelmed, and despite my husband and brother's support, utterly alone.

It has taken considerable time and effort for me to put the loss of my parents into perspective. A few months after my father died, when I was hurting the most, I went to the bookstore to find a book that would help me process what I was feeling. I found nothing to which I could relate. There were books about losing your mom or losing your dad, but most books about losing both parents, it seemed, were written by clinicians. I wanted to read about how real people coped with this pain. I wanted a book to reassure me that I wasn't the only person so profoundly unsettled by the deaths of my parents.

Finding the right people to interview was my biggest challenge... And because all the interviews presented here are intimate, and address similar moments in dealing with this specific loss, I am hoping that this book will serve as a literary support group, providing guidance to anyone who reaches this milestone.

View the full list of contributors to Always Too Soon.